Hi Graeme, I wouldn't worry about it - even the best of us forget these kind of things from time to time! I don't know what difference there is between Debian and Ubuntu, but this is how you do it in Ubuntu as far as I know: /etc/bind/named.conf.local is for your zone information, so something like this: zone "simmo.gs" { type master; zone "db.simmo.gs"; }; /etc/bind/db.simmo.gs is the file containing your NS, A, etc. records: simmo.gs. IN SOA ns.simmo.gs you.simmo.gs. ( 20100111 ; Serial ; Defaults below as far as I'm aware! 180m ; Refresh after 3 hours 10m ; retry after 10 mins 1w ; expire after 1h ; negative caching TTL ) ; Nameservers IN NS ns.simmo.gs. ; Hosts ns IN A x.x.x.x ; replace that with NS IP address www IN A x.x.x.x ; replace with your webserver IP address That's probably the most basic config you can get away. It might or might not work - hopefully if I've missed something out, someone will correct me! James 2010/1/11 Graeme Simpson <graeme(a)butterware.co.uk>uk>:

Hi Graeme, On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 09:00:40PM +0000, Graeme Simpson wrote: Okay, well first it depends what you want to achieve. I'm assuming that you intend to install a DNS server, serve these two zones, and have BitFolk provide secondary name servers. First you would want to pick which nameserver software you're going to use. If you don't already have an opinion then BIND is a reasonable choice as it's probably the most common and easiest to find help and examples for. It's not necessarily the best, but it will work. After you've installed that, you will want to add zone files for each of those zones, and add them to BIND's configuration. On Debian/Ubuntu you would probably put a file in /etc/bind for each, so maybe /etc/bind/db.simmo.gs and /etc/bind/db.goodwithwords.eu. Then in named.conf.local you would have a config stanza for each, a bit like: zone "simmo.gs" { type master; file "/etc/bind/db.simmo.gs"; }; Similar for goodwithwords.eu. Each of these zone files might be something like: $TTL 86400 @ SOA ns.simmo.gs. hostmaster.simmo.gs. ( 2010011101 ; Serial - YYYYMMDDXX 14400 ; Refresh (4hrs) 900 ; Retry (15 mins) 1209600 ; Expire (2 weeks) 3600) ; Minimum (1 hour) ; Useful doc for above SOA values: ; http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-203.html NS ns.simmo.gs. NS a.authns.bitfolk.com. NS b.authns.bitfolk.com. NS c.authns.bitfolk.com. MX 5 mail.simmo.gs. A 212.13.195.X ns A 212.13.195.X www CNAME simmo.gs. The "hostmaster.simmo.gs" part is an email address (replace first . with @), so make it something that does or will work for contact purposes. The NS list assumes that you wish to have BitFolk provide secondary DNS for you. If you don't then put whatever nameservers in that you will be using. Most registrars will want to see at least 2. Get these zone files loaded, make sure the logs show that nothing is wrong, and make sure you can query your name server for the records, e.g.: $ dig +noall +answer -t soa taras.net @212.13.194.70 taras.net. 86400 IN SOA a.authns.bitfolk.com. hostmaster.bitfolk.com. 2009111001 14400 7200 1209600 43200 (substituting your domains for taras.net and your IP for 212.13.194.70) Once that works, if you're wanting BitFolk to provide some more servers then it's time to drop a line to support(a)bitfolk.com asking for that. At this point you are ready to tell your registrar(s) what nameservers to use for each domain. Exactly how that is done varies from registrar to registrar. After you've done that, the servers you've listed with your registrars and in your zones should start to receive queries. "dig" command line tool and squishy dns check: http://www.squish.net/dnscheck/ are very useful debugging tools - use those and post back here if you have problems you can't solve. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Graeme Simpson wrote: I think most people have assumed that you want to run your own DNS, but it's not clear from your email that that's what you want to achieve, or whether you simply want to point your domain names at your VPS. If you all you want to do is point the domain names at the VPS you have with Bitfolk to serve websites on those addresses, there's not necessarily any need to run your own DNS, assuming that godaddy.com provides some kind of DNS control panel or you don't mind using a 3rd party DNS service. If all you want to do is run a website on those domain names from your VPS, simply create a DNS A record in the goddaddy.com DNS control panel which points to the IP address of your VPS. Commonly practice is to have records for both simmo.gs and www.simmo.gs that point at the same IP, so people get the same website regardless of whether they include the www. part. If all you want to do is serve a website from them, then that's enough, you just configure your webserver to serve a particular website when it receives a request for one of those domains. If godaddy.com don't do a DNS control panel, you can sign up with DNS provider, I think one has been recommended previously in the thread and I used zoneedit.com in the past, though it only allows you 5 free domains before they start expecting money. You then tell godaddy.com what your DNS new servers are for your domains (ie the ones provided by the 3rd party). If you want to serve a different website on (www.)goodwithwords.eu to the one you serve from (www.)simmo.gs on the same VPS with one IP, then you need to look at name based virtualhosts. Assuming you're using Apache as your web server: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/name-based.html If you also want to start serving mail from your VPS, then you need to create MX records in whatever DNS service you use which point at the *hostname* of your VPS (not the IP). More on MX records: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MX_record BIND specific: http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch8/mx.html Apologies if I've got the wrong end of the stick and you're question has already been answered adequately. Regards, Adam Sweet - -- http://blog.adamsweet.org/